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This tool is great, yeah, but we need to focus on gameplay now. If Josh manages to stick to his current plans

Josh just needs to shelve any new tool ideas, unless all 3 devs agree a new tool would help, until such time that LT exists with as close to LT 1.0 as possible.
Pragmatic & ProjectManager Josh are needed now, more than ever, to use the current tool to map out what is remaining to plug in all existing logic & functionality, from LTSL etc, and see what remains.
Fleshing out the current tool could then reap benefits , such as obtaining a true (and realistic) roadmap to 0.90.

Im not upset with the dev-log not showing gameplay videos or such.
The main reason I visit game-dev forums is to see the technical work and gameplay iterations beeing done when working on game projects.
So technical info on an editor is just fine.

But I think that an editor at this stage is actually more hindering than helping. As its a productivity tool, it is also restrictive (by nature, as an editor abstracts away tasks).
And before having a working "alpha" gameplay, including not just visual and engine related components, but things like a complex AI (not just turn and shoot), economic simulation, a functional GUI for all major subsystems of the game, misson-systems, a halfway working balancing etc.
-> its hard to tell what larger changes have to be done to the codebase and how the systems interact, and what resources to load etc.
An editor can actually halt quick iterations on those changes; if the editor cannot already represent those changes.

eg: -> Better to put the editor aside and continue working on its AFTER a functionally complete alpha gameplay is finished.

And on another topic: I have not heard anything concrete about AI or the economy simulation recently. Those are not some small subsystems. Getting those elements to work properly takes a large chunk of the actual gameplay development time. Mainly because they WILL have to be iterated on a lot. (how they feel cannot be determined by some simple performance metrics, so its requires a lot of play-tests and tuning them)
Its more important to get them to work than a convenient user interface for modding at this stage.

Thanks Tal and Hyperion for the welcoming. It's nice to be talking to you both after so many years reading your posts
Also, nice to see that my concerns are shared by so many great users of this forum and that those who don't share were not pissed off with my post.

I've read a few people saying things like "Building tools like this one earlier rather than later means you can get more out of it", "I get the feeling not everyone understands the significance of the work that's been done", or "[those tool-building efforts] are going to future-rpoof the game". I would be very scared if Josh either shares such thoughts and/or is still in such stage of development after more than five years. Also, my experience is that the idea "You gotta build tools to build a game" is just plain wrong, but I won't get into that.

In terms of "tools for the development of the game", I think that the most important thing a programmer has to *always* keep in mind is the trade-off calculation (a.k.a. there is no free lunch for programmers). It's obvious that *any* new tools have benefits. Even more, any well implemented gamedev tools boos productivity. Since that is true by definition, it should by itself raise the flag that the first crucial question is "how much" benefits is yielded given the cost of building/buying/learning the tool. The second crucial question is "how much time have I already spent and how much time do I have left". Supposed you have a deadline of, say, 4 months to implement a program and with the tool at your disposal you estimate it takes you 5 months to finish the task. Now, suppose that you have an idea for a new tool that would let you do the job in just 3 months, but building the tool costs you 2.5 months. Well, with the new shiny tool you would not save time. Someone could then claim that Josh is a stellar programmer that builds amazing tools in 1 to 4 weeks, which can help improve productivity for many months to come. All that is true, if and only if at some point Josh *stops* building tools and start *using* them.

However, I think that the problem is not merely of Josh never stopping to build tools for him or his team to use. I think that even more important is the issue of not realizing that as much as many players would love to have a deeply moddable game (myself included), he is not developing a game engine for others to build games. The praised deep moddability of LT already costed at least half of LT's development time and there is little to no progress game-wise. What is better, to decrease the depth of a great released game's moddability or to have an amazing unprecedented level moddability to an imaginary game that never happens to be implemented? In my humble opinion, Josh's main mistake has been to confuse, for years now, the nicety of giving us a deeply moddable game with his passion for implementing gamedev tools for others to use.

Internal development should stay internal; whether LT is built with vim, LTEditor, Notepad++, or a carefully-wielded electron emitter pointed directly at a RAM chip is beyond the scope of the community's interests. Hungry, slavering barbecue guests probably aren't as interested in the technical advancement of the host's grill as much they are in the meat sizzling on its grate.

I fully agree with Damocles above. I love seeing the technical details. I bet that the possibility of seeing the internal development of LT is actually what brought many of the initial supporters of the game on-board over the years. The problem is not seeing the tool-building, the problem is not seeing game-building progress.

... there is just one thing I would like to know. Josh at one point said he wanted to approach development for the remaining time until release in a way to always have a presentable build, however limited in gameplay this build might be. So my question is - which I just realized is actually two, but oh well:

Is there currently a build that could be used to demo the game if someone showed up?

Is this build, if it exists, richer in implemented gameplay systems than it was around the last devlog?

If so, I'm cool, please continue. If not, maybe the current trajectory in development should be reconsidered.
Maybe I missed this information in the walls of texts (no offense intended), if that's the case, never mind.

Thanks Tal and Hyperion for the welcoming. It's nice to be talking to you both after so many years reading your posts
Also, nice to see that my concerns are shared by so many great users of this forum and that those who don't share were not pissed off with my post.

No, you've been quite polite and friendly, so I don't think anyone would have cause to be mad at you. You fit in well here, I think.

Internal development should stay internal; whether LT is built with vim, LTEditor, Notepad++, or a carefully-wielded electron emitter pointed directly at a RAM chip is beyond the scope of the community's interests. Hungry, slavering barbecue guests probably aren't as interested in the technical advancement of the host's grill as much they are in the meat sizzling on its grate.

I fully agree with Damocles above. I love seeing the technical details. I bet that the possibility of seeing the internal development of LT is actually what brought many of the initial supporters of the game on-board over the years. The problem is not seeing the tool-building, the problem is not seeing game-building progress.

I also disagree with what Grumble said here. I've seen firsthand that the community (as it presently exists) is very interested in technical details. And for those that aren't - they simply don't have to read it if they aren't interested.

... there is just one thing I would like to know. Josh at one point said he wanted to approach development for the remaining time until release in a way to always have a presentable build, however limited in gameplay this build might be. So my question is - which I just realized is actually two, but oh well:

Is there currently a build that could be used to demo the game if someone showed up?

Is this build, if it exists, richer in implemented gameplay systems than it was around the last devlog?

If so, I'm cool, please continue. If not, maybe the current trajectory in development should be reconsidered.
Maybe I missed this information in the walls of texts (no offense intended), if that's the case, never mind.

Without saying too much: yes, and yes. I don't think it was formally announced, though, so I don't think you missed anything.

Thanks Tal and Hyperion for the welcoming. It's nice to be talking to you both after so many years reading your posts

May I add a belated welcome, JGM? It's always good to see a new member who is prepared to contribute to these forums. You must know by now that this Community is tolerant and happy to read all opinions which are expressed politely? I'm still welcome here which I find astonishing.

Victor! I have the best of news. Adam says that the game will release this year.

viewtopic.php?p=159527#p159527

So, that must mean that the Beta is going to come soon. Right?

Yes, I remember reading that, Naed. I'm sure the LT Team are working hard to deliver the Beta but I was concerned to see the latest update from Josh. I'd like to think that the promised Beta will arrive this year but it doesn't help when the lead on the project starts talking about additional tools and not about burgeoning gameplay.

I really would like to see the game I pledged for before I'm too old to care.

Victor! I have the best of news. Adam says that the game will release this year.

viewtopic.php?p=159527#p159527

So, that must mean that the Beta is going to come soon. Right?

Yes, I remember reading that, Naed. I'm sure the LT Team are working hard to deliver the Beta but I was concerned to see the latest update from Josh. I'd like to think that the promised Beta will arrive this year but it doesn't help when the lead on the project starts talking about additional tools and not about burgeoning gameplay.

I really would like to see the game I pledged for before I'm too old to care.

I think this tool was something planned from the start (Not the intricacies, but the general idea).
I wasn't under the impression that Josh was writing the majority of the gameplay though, I thought that was more Adam's focus?

It's now mid-March 2018. Let's suppose the next time we hear from Josh is somewhere around April 15, 2018.

And let's further suppose that Josh drops an update around April 15 that consists of an effusively detailed description of additional tool development, and improvements to the C language core of LT, and a refinement of the LuaJIT structure that makes the Lua scripts run 20% faster, etc. etc.

Will that still be OK?

Suppose it's May 2018, and that update is also a description about improvements to the back-end systems of LT.

Suppose it's June.

Suppose it's July, or August, or October 2018, and each Official Update lets us in on some seriously cool enhancement to the architecture of Limit Theory but with little if any description of progress on gameplay functionality.

Still OK?

At what point, if any, is it not OK?

I want to be sure to add here that I'm not going to tolerate any criticism of my comments on this subject. I drove four hours to say hi to Josh and to spend 30 minutes telling him how much I support his efforts, followed by another four hours to drive home -- at this point, it had better be clear that I'm a fan of Josh and this project. (I mean, I didn't even drive four hours to visit the very nice lady whom I married.)

I'm here for the duration. I support Josh, and Adam and Lindsey, for as long as it takes.

And within that support, I think I'm not being unfair in asking: when will the architectural updates shift into gameplay content updates?